Latest revision as of 06:55, 8 February 2009

There's a distinct wave of depression here---perhaps I'd better
say a period of setbacks has come. So far as we can find out
only the Germans are doing anything in the war on land. The position
in France is essentially the same as it was in November, only
the Germans are much more strongly entrenched. Their great plenty
of machine guns enables them to use fewer men and to kill more
than the Allies. The Russians also lack ammunition and are yielding
more and more territory. The Allies ---so you hear now---will
do well if they get their little army away from the Dardanelles
before the German Turks eat 'em alive, and no Balkan state comes
in to help the Allies. Italy makes progress---slowly, of course,
over almost impassable mountains---etc., etc. Most of this doleful
recital I think is true; and I find more and more men here who
have lost hope of seeing an end of the war in less than two or
three years, and more and more who fear that the Germans will
never be forced out of Belgium. And the era of the giant aeroplane
seems about to come---a machine that can carry several tons and
several men and go great distances---two engines, two propellers,
and the like. It isn't at all impossible, I am told, that these
machines may be the things that will at last end the war---possibly,
but I doubt it.

At any rate, it is true that a great wave of discouragement
is come. All these events and more seem to prove to my mind the
rather dismal failure the Liberal Government made---a failure
really to grasp the problem. It was a dead failure. Of course
they are waking up now, when they are faced with a certain dread
lest many soldiers prefer frankly to die rather than spend another
winter in practically the same trenches. You hear rumours, too,
of great impending military scandals---God knows whether there
be any truth in them or not.

In a word, while no Englishman gives up or will ever give
up---that's all rot---the job he has in hand is not going well.
He's got to spit on his hands and buckle up his belt two holes
tighter yet. And I haven't seen a man for a month who dares hope
for an end of the fight within any time that he can foresee.

I had a talk to-day with the Russian Ambassador.[1] He wished to know how matters
stood between the United States and Great Britain. I said to
him: "I'll give you a task if you have leisure. Set to and
help me hurry up your distinguished Ally in dealing with our
shipping troubles."

The old man laughed---that seemed a huge joke to him; he threw
up his hands and exclaimed---"My God! He is slow about his
own business---has always been slow ---can't be anything else."

After more such banter, the nigger in his wood-pile poked
his head out: "Is there any danger," he asked. "that
munitions may be stopped?"

The Germans have been preparing northern France for German
occupation. No French are left there, of course, except women
and children and old men. They must be fed or starved or deported.
The Germans put them on trains---a whole village at a time---and
run them to the Swiss frontier. Of course the Swiss pass them
on into France. The French have their own and---the Germans will
have northern France without any French population, if this process
goes on long enough.

The mere bang! bang! frightful era of the war is passed.

The Germans are settling down to permanent business with their
great organizing machine. Of course they talk about the freedom
of the seas and such mush-mush; of course they'd like to have
Paris and rob it of enough money to pay what the war has cost
them, and London, too. But what they really want for keeps is
seacoast---Belgium and as much of the French coast as they can
win. That's really what they are out gunning for. Of course,
somehow at some time they mean to get Holland, too, and Denmark,
if they really need it. Then they'll have a very respectable
seacoast---the thing that they chiefly lack now.

More and more people are getting their nerves knocked out.
I went to a big hospital on Sunday, twenty-five miles out of
London. They showed me an enormous, muscular Tommy sitting by
himself in a chair under the trees. He had had a slight wound
which quickly got well. But his speech was gone. That came back,
too, later. But then he wouldn't talk and he'd insist on going
off by himself. He's just knocked out---you can't find out just
how much gumption he has left. That's what the war did for him:
it stupefied him. Well, it's stupefied lots of folks who have
never seen a trench. That's what's happened. Of all the men who
started in with the game, I verily believe that Lloyd George
is holding up best. He organized British finance. Now he's organizing
British industry.

It's got hot in London---hotter than I've ever known it. It
gets lonelier (more people going away) and sadder ---more wounded
coming back and more visible sorrow. We seem to be settling down
to something that is more or less like Paris---so far less, but
it may become more and more like it. And the confident note of
an earlier period is accompanied by a dull undertone of much

less cheerfulness. The end is---in the lap of the gods.

W. H. P.

.

To Arthur W. Page

American Embassy, London,

July 25, 1915.

DEAR ARTHUR:

. . . Many men here are very active in their thought about
the future relations of the United States and Great Britain.
Will the war bring or leave them closer together? If the German
machine be completely smashed (and it may not be completely smashed)
the Japanese danger will remain. I do not know how to estimate
that danger accurately. But there is such a danger. And, if the
German wild beast ever come to life again, there's an eternal
chance of trouble with it. For defensive purposes it may become
of the very first importance that the whole English-speaking
world should stand together---not in entangling alliance, but
with a much clearer understanding than we have ever yet had.
I'll indicate to you some of my cogitations on this subject by
trying to repeat what I told Philip Kerr[2] a fortnight ago---one Sunday
in the country. I can write this to you without seeming to parade
my own opinions.---Kerr is one of "The Round Table,"
perhaps the best group of men here for the real study and free
discussion of large political subjects. Their quarterly, The
Round Table, is the best review, I dare say, in the world.
Kerr is red hot for a close and perfect understanding between
Great Britain and the United States. I told him that, since Great
Britain had only about forty per cent. of the white English-speaking
people and the United States had about sixty per cent., I hoped
in his natural history that the tail didn't wag the dog. I went
on:

"You now have the advantage of us in your aggregation
of three centuries of accumulated wealth---the spoil of all the
world---and in the talent that you have developed for conserving
it and adding to it and in the institutions you have built up
to perpetuate it---your merchant ships, your insurance, your
world-wide banking, your mortgages on all new lands; but isn't
this the only advantage you have? This advantage will pass. You
are now shooting away millions and millions, and you will have
a debt that is bound to burden industry. On our side, we have
a more recently mixed race than yours; you've begun to inbreed.
We have also (and therefore) more adaptability, a greater keenness
of mind in our masses; we are Old-World men set free-free of
classes and traditions and all that they connote. Your so-called
democracy is far behind ours. Your aristocracy and your privileges
necessarily bring a social and economic burden. Half your people
look backward.

"Your leadership rests on your wealth and on the power
that you've built on your wealth."

When he asked me how we were to come closer together----"closer
together, with your old-time distrust of us and with your remoteness?"---I
stopped him at "remoteness."

"That's the reason," I said. "Your idea of
our 'remoteness.' 'Remoteness' from what? From you? Are you not
betraying the only real difficulty of a closer sympathy by assuming
that you are the centre of the world? When you bring yourself
to think of the British Empire as a part of the American Union---mind
you, I am not saying that you would be formally admitted---but
when you are yourselves in close enough sympathy with us to wish
to be admitted, the chief difficulty of a real union of thought
will be gone. You recall Lord Rosebery's speech in which he pictured
the capital of the British Empire being moved to Washington if
the American Colonies had been retained under the Crown? Well,
it was the Crown that was the trouble, and the capital of English-speaking
folk has been so moved and you still remain 'remote.' Drop 'remote'
from your vocabulary and your thought and we'll actually be closer
together."

It's an enormous problem---just how to bring these countries
closer together. Perhaps nothing can do it but some great common
danger or some great common adventure. But this is one of the
problems of your lifetime. England can't get itself clean loose
from the continent nor from continental mediævalism; and
with that we can have nothing to do. Men like Kerr think that
somehow a great push toward democracy here will be given by the
war. I don't quite see how. So far the aristocracy have made
perhaps the best showing in defense of English liberty. They
are paying the bills of the war; they have sent their sons; these
sons have died like men; and their parents never whimper. It's
a fine breed for such great uses as these. There was a fine incident
in the House of Lords the other day, which gave the lie to the
talk that one used to hear here about "degeneracy."
Somebody made a perfectly innocent proposal to complete a list
of peers and peers' sons who had fallen in the war---a thing
that will, of course, be done, just as a similar list will be
compiled of the House of Commons, of Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
But one peer after another objected vigorously lest such a list
appear immodest. "We are but doing our duty. Let the matter
rest there."

In a time like this the aristocracy proves its worth. In fact,
all aristocracies grew chiefly out of wars, and perhaps they
are better for wars than a real democracy. Here, you see, you
run into one of those contradictions in life and history which
make the world so hard to change. . . .

You know there are some reasons why peace, whenever it may
come, will bring problems as bad as the problems of the war itself.
I can think of no worse task than the long conferences of the
Allies with their conflicting interests and ambitions. Then must
come their conferences with the enemy. Then there are sure to
be other conferences to try to make peace secure. And, of course,
many are going to be dissatisfied and disappointed, and perhaps
out of these disappointments other wars may come. The world will
not take up its knitting and sit quietly by the fire for many

a year to come. . . .

Affectionately,

W. H. P.

.

One happiness came to Mr. and Mrs. Page in the midst of all
these war alarums. On August 4, 1915, their only daughter, Katharine,
was married to Mr. Charles G. Loring, of Boston, Massachusetts.
The occasion gave the King an opportunity of showing the high
regard in which Page and his family were held. It had been planned
that the wedding should take place in Westminster Abbey, but the
King very courteously offered Miss Page the Royal chapel in St.
James's Palace. This was a distinguished compliment, as it was
the first time that any marriage, in which both bride and bridegroom
were foreigners, had ever been celebrated in this building, which
for centuries has been the scene of royal weddings. The special
place which his daughter had always held in the Ambassador's affections
is apparent in the many letters that now followed her to her new
home in the United States. The unique use Page made of the initials
of his daughter's name was characteristic.

.

To Mrs. Charles G. Loring

London, September 1, 1915.

MY DEAR K. A. P-TAIN:

Here's a joke on your mother and Frank: We three (and Smith)
went up to Broadway in the car, to stay there a little while
and then to go on into Wales, etc. The hotel is an old curiosity
shop; you sit on Elizabethan chairs by a Queen Anne table, on
a drunken floor, and look at the pewter platters on the wall
or do your best to look at them, for the ancient windows admit
hardly any light. "Oh! lovely," cries Frank; and then
he and your mother make out in the half-darkness a perfectly
wonderful copper mug on the mantelpiece; and you go out and come
in the ramshackle door (stooping every time) after you've felt
all about for the rusty old iron latch, and then you step down
two steps (or fall), presently to step up two more. Well, for
dinner we had six kinds of meat and two meat pies and potatoes
and currants! My dinner was a potato. I'm old and infirm and
I have many ailments, but I'm not so bad off as to be able to
live on a potato a day. And since we were having a vacation,
I didn't see the point. So I came home where I have seven courses
for dinner, all good; and Mrs. Leggett took my place in the car.
That carnivorous company went on. They've got to eat six kinds
of meat and two meat pies and---currants! I haven't. Your mother
calls me up on the phone every morning---me, who am living here
in luxury, seven courses at every dinner---and asks anxiously,
"And how are you, dear?" I answer: "Prime, and
how are you?" We are all enjoying ourselves, you see, and
I don't have to eat six kinds of meat and two meat pies and---currants!
They do; and may Heaven save 'em and get 'em home safe!

It's lovely in London now---fine, shining days and showers
at night and Ranelagh beautiful, and few people here; but I don't
deny its loneliness---somewhat. Yet sleep is good, and easy and
long. I have neither an ocean voyage nor six kinds of meat and
two meat pies and currants. I congratulate myself and write to
you and mother.

You'll land to-morrow or next day---good; I congratulate you.
Salute the good land for me and present my respectful compliments
to vegetables that have taste and fruit that is not sour---to
the sunshine, in fact, and to everything that ripens and sweetens
in its glow.

And you're now (when this reaches you) fixing up your home---your
own home, dear Kitty. Bless your dear life, you left a
home here---wasn't it a good and nice one?---left it very lonely
for the man who has loved you twenty-four years and been made
happy by your presence. But he'll love you twenty-five more and
on and on---always. So you haven't lost that---nor can you. And
it's very fit and right that you should build your own nest;
that adds another happy home, you see. And I'm very sure it will
be very happy always. Whatever I can do to make it so, now or
ever, you have only to say. But your mother took your photograph
with her and got it out of the bag and put it on the bureau as
soon as she went to her room---a photograph taken when you were
a little girl.

Hodson[3]
came up to see me to-day and with tears of gratitude in his voice
told me of the present that you and Chud had made him. He is
very genuinely pleased. As for the rest, life goes on as usual.

I laugh as I think of all your new aunts and cousins looking
you over and wondering if you'll fit, and then saying to one
another as they go to bed: "She is lovely---isn't she? "
I could tell 'em a thing or two if I had a whack at 'em.

And you'll soon have all your pretty things in place in your
pretty home, and a lot more that I haven't seen. I'll see 'em
all before many years---and you, too! Tell me, did Chud get you
a dinner book? Keep your record of things: you'll enjoy it in
later years. And you'll have a nice time this autumn---your new
kinsfolk, your new friends and old and Boston and Cambridge.
If you run across Mr. Mifflin, William Roscoe Thayer, James Ford
Rhodes, President Eliot---these are my particular old friends
whose names occur at the moment.

My love to you and Chud too,

Affectionately,

W. H. P.

.

The task of being " German Ambassador to Great Britain"
was evidently not without its irritations.

.

To Arthur W. Page

September 15, 1915.

DEAR ARTHUR:

Yesterday was my German day. When the boy came up to my room,
I told him I had some official calls to make.

"Therefore get out my oldest and worst suit." He
looked much confused; and when I got up both my worst and best
suits were laid out. Evidently he thought he must have misunderstood
me. I asked your mother if she was ready to go down to breakfast.
"Yes."---" Well, then I'll leave you." She
grunted something and when we both got down she asked: "What
did you say to me upstairs?" I replied: "I regard
the incident as closed." She looked a sort of pitying look
at me and a minute or two later asked: "What on earth is
the matter with you? Can't you hear at all?" I replied:
"No. Therefore let's talk." She gave it up, but looked
at me again to make sure I was all there.

I stopped at the barber shop, badly needing a shave. The barber
got his brush and razor ready. I said: "Cut my hair."
He didn't talk for a few minutes, evidently engaged in deep thought.

When I got to my office, a case was brought to me of a runaway
American who was caught trying to send news to Germany. "Very
good," said I, "now let it be made evident that it
shall appear therefore that his innocence having been duly established
he shall be shot."

"What, sir?"

"That since it must be evident that his guilt is genuine
therefore see that he be acquitted and then shot."

Laughlin and Bell and Stabler were seen in an earnest conference
in the next room for nearly half an hour.

Shoecraft brought me a letter. "This is the most courteous
complaint about the French passport bureau we have yet had. I
thought you'd like to see this lady's letter. She says she knows
you."

"Do not answer it, then."

He went off and conferred with the others.

Hodson spoke of the dog he sold to Frank. "Yes,"
said I, "since he was a very nice dog, therefore he was
worthless."

"Sir? "

And he went off after looking back at me in a queer way.

The day went on in that fashion. When I came out to go to
lunch, the stairs down led upward and I found myself, therefore,
stepping out of the roof on to the sidewalk ---the house upside
down. Smith looked puzzled. "Home, sir?"

"No. Go the other way." After he had driven two
or three blocks, I told him to turn again and go the other way---home!

Your mother said almost as soon as I got into the door ----"What
was the matter with you this morning?"

"Oh, nothing. You forget that I am the German Ambassador."

Now this whole narrative is a lie. Nothing in it occurred.

If it were otherwise it wouldn't be German.

Affectionately,

W. H. P.

.

To Mrs. Charles G. Loring

London, 6 Grosvenor Square.

Sunday, September 19, 1915.

MY DEAR KITTY:

You never had a finer autumnal day in the land of the free
than this day has been in this old kingdom---fresh and fair;
and so your mother said to herself and me: "Let's go out
to the Laughlins' to lunch," and we went. There never was
a prettier drive. We found out among other things that you pleased
Mrs. Laughlin very much by your letter. Her garden changes every
week or so, and it never was lovelier than it is now.---Then
we came back home and dined alone. Well, since we can't have
you and Chud and Frank, I don't care if we do dine alone sometimes
for some time to come. Your mother's monstrous good company,
and sometimes three is a crowd. And now is a good time to be
alone. London never was so dull or deserted since I've known
it, nor ever so depressed. The military (land) operations are
not cheerful; the hospitals are all full; I see more wounded
soldiers by far than at any previous time; the Zeppelins came
somewhere to this island every night for a week---one of them,
on the night of the big raid, was visible from our square for
fifteen or twenty minutes---in general it is a dull and depressing
time. I have thought that since you were determined to run off
with a young fellow, you chose a pretty good time to go away.
I'm afraid there'll be no more of what we call "fun"
in this town as long as we stay here.

Worse yet: in spite of the Coalition Government, and everybody's
wish to get on smoothly and to do nothing but to push the war,
since Parliament convened there's been a great row, which doesn't
get less. The labour men give trouble; people blame the politicians:
Lloyd George is saving the country, say some; Lloyd George ought
to be hanged, say others. Down with Northcliffe! They seem likely
to burn him at the stake---except those who contend that he has
saved the nation. Some maintain that the cabinet is too big---twenty-two.
More say that it has no leadership. If you favour conscription,
you are a traitor: if you don't favour it, you are pro-German.
It's the same sort of old quarrel they had before the war, only
it is about more subjects. In fact, nobody seems very clearly
to know what it's about. Meantime the Government is spending
money at a rate that nobody ever dreamed of before. Three million
pounds a day---some days five million. The Germans meantime are
taking Russia; the Allies are not taking the Dardanelles; in
France the old deadlock continues. Boston at its worst must be

far more cheerful than this.

Affectionately and with my love to Chud,

W. H. P.

.

To the President

London, September 26, 1915.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

The suppression of facts about the military situation is more
rigorous than ever since the military facts have become so discouraging.
The volume of pretty well authenticated news that I used to hear
privately has become sensibly diminished. Rumours that reach
me by the back door, in all sorts of indirect ways, are not fewer,
but fewer of them are credible. There is great confusion, great
fear, very great depression---far greater, I think, than England
has felt, certainly since the Napoleonic scare and probably since
the threat of the Armada. Nobody, I think, supposes that England
herself will be conquered: confidence in the navy is supreme.
But the fear of a practical defeat of the Allies on the continent
is become general. Russia may have to pay a huge indemnity, going
far to reimburse Germany for the cost of the war; Belgium may
be permanently held unless Germany receive an indemnity to evacuate,
and her seaports may be held anyhow; the Germans may reach Constantinople
before the Allies, and Germany may thus hold, when the war ends,
an open way to the East; and France may have to pay a large sum
to regain her northern territory now held by the Germans. These
are not the convictions of men here, but they have distinctly
become the fears; and many men's mind are beginning to adjust
themselves to the possible end of the war, as a draw, with these
results. Of course such an end would be a real German victory
and---another war as soon as enough men grow up to fight it.

When the more cheerful part of public opinion, especially
when any member of the Government, affects to laugh at these
fears, the people say: "Well, make known the facts that
you base your hope on. Precisely how many men have volunteered?
Is the voluntary system a success or has it reached its limit?
Precisely what is the situation in the Dardanelles? Are the allied
armies strong enough to make a big drive to break through the
German line in France? Have they big guns and ammunition enough?
What are the facts about the chance in the Dardanelles? What
have we done with reference to the Balkan States? " Thus
an angry and ominous political situation is arising. The censorship
on war news apparently becomes severer, and the general fear
spreads and deepens. The air, of course, becomes heavily charged
with such rumours as these: that if the Government continue its
policy of secrecy, Lloyd George will resign, seeing no hope of
a real victory: that, if he do resign, his resignation will disrupt
the Government---cause a sort of earthquake; that the Government
will probably fall and Lloyd George will be asked to form another
one, since he is, as the public sees it, the most active and
efficient man in political life; that, if all the Balkan States
fail the Allies, Sir Edward Grey will be reckoned a failure and
must resign; and you even now hear talk of Mr. Balfour's succeeding
him.

It is impossible to say what basis there is for these and
other such rumours, but they show the general very serious depression
and dissatisfaction. Of that there is no doubt. Nor is there
any doubt about grave differences in the Cabinet about conscription
nor of grave fear in the public mind about the action of labour
unions in hindering the utmost production of ammunition, nor
of the increasing feeling that the Prime Minister doesn't lead
the nation. Except Lloyd George and the Chancellor of the Exchequer[4] the Cabinet
seems to suffer a sort of paralysis. Lord Kitchener's speech
in the House of Lords, explaining the military situation, reads
like a series of month-old bulletins and was a great disappointment.
Mr. Asquith's corresponding speech in the House seemed to lack
complete frankness. The nation feels that it is being kept in
the dark, and all the military information that it gets is discouraging.
Sir Edward Grey, as philosophic and enduring a man as I know,
seems much more depressed than I have ever known him to be; Bryce
is very very far from cheerful; Plunkett,[5] whom also you know, is in the
dumps---it's hard to find a cheerful or a hopeful man.

The secrecy of official life has become so great and successful
that prophecy of political changes must be mere guess work. But,
unless good news come from the Dardanelles in particular, I have
a feeling that Asquith may resign---be forced out by the gradual
pressure of public opinion; that Lloyd George will become Prime
Minister, and that (probably) Sir Edward Grey may resign. Yet
I cannot take the prevailing military discouragement at its face
value. The last half million men and the last million pounds
will decide the contest, and the Allies will have these. This
very depression strengthens the nation's resolution to a degree
that they for the moment forget. The blockade and the armies
in the field will wear Germany down---not absolutely conquer
her, but wear her down---probably in another year.

In the meantime our prestige (if that be the right word),
in British judgment, is gone. As they regard it, we have permitted
the Germans to kill our citizens, to carry on a world-wide underhand
propaganda from our country (as well as in it), for which they
have made no apology and no reparation but only vague assurances
for the future now that their submarine fleet has been almost
destroyed. They think that we are credulous to the point of simplicity
to accept any assurances that Bernstorff may give---in a word,
that the peace-at-any-price sentiment so dominates American opinion
and the American Government that we will submit to any indignity
or insult---that we will learn the Germans' real character when
it is too late to save our honour or dignity. There is no doubt
of the definiteness or depth of this opinion.

And I am afraid that this feeling will show itself in our
future dealings with this government. The public opinion of the
nation as well as the Government accepts their blockade as justified
as well as necessary. They will not yield on that point, and
they will regard our protests as really inspired by German influence---thus
far at least: that the German propaganda has organized and encouraged
the commercial objection in the United States, and that this
propaganda and the peace-at-any-price sentiment demand a stiff
controversy with England to offset the stiff controversy with
Germany; and, after all, they ask, what does a stiff controversy
with the United States amount to? I had no idea that English
opinion could so quickly become practically indifferent as to
what the United States thinks or does. And as nearly as I can
make it out, there is not a general wish that we should go to
war. The prevalent feeling is not a selfish wish for military
help. In fact they think that, by the making of munitions, by
the taking of loans, and by the sale of food we can help them
more than by military and naval action.

Their feeling is based on their disappointment at our submitting
to what they regard as German dallying with us and to German
insults. They believe that, if we had sent Bernstorff home when
his government made its unsatisfactory reply to our first Lusitania
note, Germany would at once have "come down"; opportunist
Balkan States would have come to the help of the Allies; Holland
and perhaps the Scandinavian States would have got some consideration
at Berlin for their losses by torpedoes; that more attention
would have been paid by Turkey to our protest against the wholesale
massacre of the Armenians; and that a better settlement with
Japan about Pacific islands and Pacific influence would have
been possible for the English at the end of the war. Since, they
argue, nobody is now afraid of the United States, her moral influence
is impaired at every capital; and I now frequently hear the opinion
that, if the war lasts another year and the Germans get less
and less use of the United States as a base of general propaganda
in all neutral countries, especially all American countries,
they are likely themselves to declare war on us as a mere defiance
of the whole world and with the hope of stirring up internal
trouble for our government by the activity of the Germans and
the Irish in the United States, which may hinder munitions and
food and loans to the Allies.

I need not remark that the English judgment of the Germans
is hardly judicial. But they reply to this that every nation
has to learn the real, incredible character of the Prussian by
its own unhappy experience. France had so to learn it, and England,
Russia, and Belgium; and we (the United States), they say, fail
to profit in time by the experience of these. After the Germans
have used us to the utmost in peace, they will force us into
war---or even flatly declare war on us when they think they can
thus cause more embarrassment to the Allies, and when they conclude
that the time is come to make sure that no great nation shall
emerge from the war with a clear commercial advantage over the
others; and in the meantime they will prove to the world by playing
with us that a democracy is necessarily pacific and hence (in
their view) contemptible. I felt warranted the other day to remark
to Lord Bryce on the unfairness of much of the English judgment
of us (he is very sad and a good deal depressed). "Yes,"
he said, "I have despaired of one people's ever really understanding
another even when the two are as closely related and as friendly
as the Americans and the English."

You were kind enough to inquire about my health in your last
note. If I could live up to the popular conception here of my
labours and responsibilities and delicate duties (which is most
flattering and greatly exaggerated), I should be only a walking
shadow of a man. But I am most inappreciately well. I imagine
that in some year to come, I may enjoy a vacation, but I could
not enjoy it now. Besides since civilization has gone backward
several centuries, I suppose I've gone back with it to a time
when men knew no such thing as a vacation. (Let's forgive House
for his kindly, mistaken solicitude.) The truth is, I often feel
that I do not know myself---body or soul, boots or breeches.
This experience is making us all here different from the men
we were---but in just what respects it is hard to tell. We are
not within hearing of the guns (except the guns that shoot at
Zeppelins when they come); but the war crowds itself in on us
sensibly more and more. There are more wounded soldiers on the
streets and in the parks. More and more families one knows lose
their sons, more and more women their husbands. Death is so common
that it seems a little thing.

Four persons have come to my house to-day (Sunday) in the
hope that I may find their missing kinsmen, and two more have
appealed to me on the telephone and two more still have sent
me notes. Since I began this letter, Mrs. Page insisted on my
going out on the edge of the city to see an old friend of many
years who has just lost both his sons and whose prospective son-in-law
is at home wounded. The first thing he said was: "Tell me,
what is America going to do?" As we drove back, we made
a call on a household whose nephew is "missing."----"Can't
you possibly help us hear definitely about him?"

This sort of thing all day every day must have some effect
on any man. Then---yesterday morning gave promise of a calm,
clear day. I never know what sensational experience awaits me
around the next corner. Then there was put on my desk the first
page of a reputable weekly paper which was filled with an open
letter to me written by the editor and signed. After the usual
description of my multitudinous and delicate duties, I was called
on to insist that my government should protest against Zeppelin
raids on London because a bomb might kill me! Humour doesn't
bubble much now on this side the world, for the censor had forbidden
the publication of this open letter lest it should possibly cause
American-German trouble! Then the American correspondents came
in to verify a report that a news agency is said to have had
that I was deluged with threatening letters!---More widows, more
mothers looking for lost sons! . . . Once in a while---far less
often than if I lived in a sane and normal world---I get a few
hours off and go to a lonely golf club. Alas I there is seldom
anybody there but now and then a pair of girls, and now and then
a pair of old fellows who have played golf for a century. Yet
back in London in the War Office I hear they indulge in disrespectful
hilarity at the poor game I play. Now how do they know? (You'd
better look to your score with Grayson: the English have spies
in America. A major-general in their spy-service department told
Mrs. Page that they knew all about Archibald[6] before he got on the ship in
New York.)

All this I send you not because it is of the slightest permanent
importance (except the English judgment of us) but because it
will prove, if you need proof, that the world is gone mad. Everything
depends on fighting power and on nothing else. A victory will
save the Government. Even distinctly hopeful military news will.
And English depression will vanish with a turn of the military
tide. If it had been Bernstorff instead of Dumba---that would
have affected even the English judgment of us. Tyrrell[7] remarked to me---did I write
you? "Think of the freaks of sheer, blind Luck; a man of
considerable ability like Dumba caught for taking a risk that
an idiot would have avoided, and a fool like Bernstorff escaping!"
Then he added: "I hope Bernstorff will be left. No other
human being could serve the English as well as he is serving
them." So, you see, even in his depression the Englishman
has some humour left---e. g., when that old sea dog Lord Fisher
heard that Mr. Balfour was to become First Lord of the Admiralty,
he cried out: "Damn it! he won't do: Arthur Balfour is too
much of a gentleman." So John Bull is now, after all, rather
pathetic---depressed as he has not been depressed for at least
a hundred years. The nobility and the common man are doing their
whole duty, dying on the Bosphorus or in France without a murmur,
or facing an insurrection in India; but the labour union man
and the commercial class are holding back and hindering a victory.